MADRAS PRESIDENCY

[s. 444] : One of the general divisions into which British India is divided. It is ruled by a governor and council appointed by the crown under the governor-general and vice- 427 Toy of India. This presidency covers the south- — with the ern portion of the Indian peninsula exception of the territory still under native Its eastern boundary is the Bay of princes. But the Bengal, its western the Indian Ocean. territory of the presidency extends along the coast of the former for some 1,200 miles, while its western shore line, along the Indian Ocean, On the north and north extends only 540 miles. west it joins (proceeding from east to west) Ori a, a part of the Bengal presidency; then the Central Provinces; then the dominions of the Nizam at Haidarabad, and finally, as its boundary line nears the Indian Ocean, the presidency Near the center of this irregular of Bombay. triangular territory is the great native state of Mysore, including five smaller native states which are closely related to the Madras Government, and directly subordinated to it. The total area of the presidency is 149,092 square miles, and the population (1901) 42,400,000. The presidency may be divided, as to its physical areas. Along aspects, into three well-marked the eastern coast, between the range of hills known as the Eastern Ghats and the sea, is a similar, tho “broad strip of low country. narrower and more diversified, strip of land extends along the western coast, between the A Western Ghats and the Indian Ocean. The interior consists of a tableland, supported on its western edge by the Western Ghats and sloping down gradually toward the Bay of Bengal on the boundary on that side being the eastern Much of the high interior range just alluded to. The is occupied by the native state of Mysore. mountains rise to greater heights as they go are India of Southern south; the highest peaks those of the Nilgiri and Anumalai groups, several of which are between eight and nine you sand •east, its feet high. The population is chiefly Hindu. 37,026,471 Hindus, 2,732,931 Mohammedans and 1,934,480 Christians, with 673,905 Animists or spirit-worshippers, make up the list of religions in the census of 1901, whose adherents exceed 30,000. The Hindus of this presidency, and some of the so-called aboriginal tribes also, belong to the Dravidian family, of which the strongest subdivision is that now known as the Tamil. People of this race appear, in prehistoric times, to have occupied the Gangetic valley, and to have been pushed south by the invading Aryans as they moved down the valley and spread over the peninsula. The language of the Dravidians still persists Of in the various languages of South India. these the Tamil is the most important and is spoken by over 12,000,000 in the presidency; the Telugu is used by almost as large a number; the Kanarese is spoken by about 1,300,000; the Tulu is preserved only by a remnant of the people among the mountains in the west of the presidency and is doomed doubtle to disappear as a spoken language. The Coorg and the Malayalam The lan(2,400,000) also belong to this stock. guages of the aboriginal tribes above mentioned are also Dravidian. The original religion of the Dravidians, before the coming of the Aryans, was probably some form of demon-worship, such as the jungle tribes still preserve. A word must be said as to the connection of the English with the presidency. Calicut and Cannanore on the west coast were occupied by the East India Company as places of trade in Madraa Madras Presidency 1616. The Company had been preceded first by the Portuguese, and as their power waned, by the Dutch. But finally the former concentrated themselves at Goa, and the Dutch withdrew. On the east coast, Masu lip at am,. north of Madras, was occupied by the English traders in 1611. The first English settlement on the site of Madras City was in 1639 (see Madras City). The French occupied Pondicherri, south of Madras, in 1672. It was not until the middle of the 18th century, when the English and French powers were in armed rivalry in Europe, that the thought of a Eo ible rivalry for supremacy in India began to e realized. In 1746 Madras was overpowered and captured by the French commander La Bourdonnais, but restored to the English two years later, at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. But the country was occupied with weak and tottering dynasties of native princes. In their contests among themselves, the English would befriend one princeling and the French another. The strife between the Oriental principals could not fail to extend itself to the European powers by which they were respectively seconded; and for half a century the fate of South India hung undecided between the French and English. Dupleix undertook to unite the native powers into one combination under French protection, but his plans were defeated by the military skill first of Lord Clive, afterward of Sir Eyre Coote. Haidar Ali, and his son Tippu Sultan, the only members of a Mohammedan dynasty which erected itself on the ruins of a Hindu principality in Mysore, with.’stood the progre of English power with a fiercene which at one time But in 1799 threatened to stop it altogether. Tippu Sultan died in the breach at his capital, Seringa pat am, the English entered the fort in triumph, and military opposition, from whatever quarter, to the English power in South India was at an end. Since then the English Government has had hardly any use for its Madras army, save for police purposes. To the historian of Indian Christianity the Madras Presidency is the most interesting por Tradition says that the Apostle tion of India. Thomas preached the Gospel here, and Mount St. Thome, near Madras, is his traditional burial Pantanus found Christians in India In place. A branch of the Syrian Church the 2d century. settled on the west coast, near Cape Com or in, centuries ago, and this”Syrian Church of Malabar” preserves its ancient liturgies, and still acknowledges subjection to the patriarch of Here also Xavier preached and bapAntioch. tized in the 16th century, and the Jesuit mi ion And here was the aries of Madura in the 17th. beginning of the Protestant mi ionary movement in India, by the hands of two young Danish (Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and mi ionaries Henry Plutschau), in 1705. Tranquebar (on the was the first station occuMadras) coast south of The Society for Promoting Christian pied. Knowledge in a few years a umed support of the mi ion. But it was long before a distinctively English mi ion was founded. Schultze came in 1719, and in 1726 began the first really sucKier nan der ce ful mi ion in Madras City. came in 1740; but in 1746, when the French were besieging Cuddalore, where he was stationed, and rendering his operations there impo ible, he removed to Calcutta, and became the father of Protestant mi ions in the Bengal In 1750 Christian Frederic Schwartz presidency. Madras Presidency Maliitsy landed in South India, and until his death in 1798 labored uninterruptedly for the good of the people and the progre of the cause of Christ. No better or greater name adorns the history of Protestant mi ions in India than his. By the labors of these great and good men and their a ociates congregations were gathered, schools established and churches founded at Tranquebar, Madras, Tri chino pol i, Tanjore and Converts were baptized by the other places. hundred and the you sand. Yet with all their excellences of character, their ability, their piety and their zeal, these men did not plant a self sustaining, manly and vigorous Christianity. Their churches exist, but with diminished numThe churches bers and enfeebled strength. gathered by them have in many cases been sur recently organized, pa ed by those more not alone in numbers, but in aggre ive character years the hundred influence. For about a and work begun by the mi ionaries of the 18th century was subsidized by the SPCK, which to a large extent furnished the funds, while the mi ionaries themselves came from Denmark and Early in the 19th century this Germany. Society transferred the mi ions to the SPG, and in due time the personnel of the mi ion staff came to be recruited wholly from the English Church, even as the money came from the same source. The introductory labors of the mi ionaries of the 18th century were followed by work on a larger scale, more sy.stem a tic ally and enerduring the 19th century. getically pursued record here the principal agencies operating The London Mi ionary in this more recent era. Society leads the way. Two mi ionaries of this Society occupied Vizagapatam, on the east coast, far north of Madras, in 180.5, during a period We when the Indian Government, taught by the directors of the East India Company at home, was bitterly opposed to the entrance of mi ionaries in India. The mi ionaries at Vizagapatam, however, were not molested, and when Parliament, in the new cliarter granted 1814 that year to the company, inserted a clause favoring mi ionary operations, and the opposition of the government ceased in consequence, the LMS was all ready to establish a station in Madras City. Bellary, northwest of Madras, near the boundary line now separating the presidency from that of Bombay, had been occupied in 1810, and Coimbatore was occupied in 1830. The Church Mi ionary Society entered Madras City in 181.5, and took over the Pal am cotta station (in the Tinnevelli district) from the Danish mi ionaries, who had planted it in 1785, in 1817. In the same year the SPG began work at Cuddalore, and a umed, during the years 1820-29, charge, from the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, of mo.st of the old Danish mi ions. Tlie Wcsleyan Mi ionary Society appeared upon tlie scene at Madras in 1816, and at Tri chino pol i two years later. The Basel Evangelical Mi ionary Society began its work, which since has spread over all the western portion of the presidency, and into many of the Kanarese districts of the Bombay presidencjr, in 1834. The English Baptist Mi ionary Society planted a station in the Ganjam district, the most northerly of those bordering on the Bay of Bengal, in 1837. The American Board of Commi ioners for Foreign Mi ions, whose mi ion among the Tamil-speaking people of Jaffna, in m 4S8 North Ceylon, had been begun soon after 1820, colonized thence, first to Madura in 1834 and to Madras in 1836; Arcot was occupied by this Society in 1855, but its work there was a year or two afterward transferred to the Dutch Reformed Church (as it was then called) of the United States, by which church it has since been maintained with much vigor. The Church of Scotland came to Madras in 1837, and since the Disruption in 1843 two Scotch mi ions have worked there side by side, and to some extent also in the interior. The American Baptist Mi ionary Union began its work now of large proportions and of extraordinary succe in Nellore and other parts of the Telugu portion of the — — presidency, in 1840. The Leipzig Luther ans came in 1841 to Tranquebar and adjacent stations, where the Luther ans of the preceding century had labored with such a iduity. There are also small German mi ions elsewhere in the presidency that of the Herm anns burg Luther ans at Nellore (1865), of the American German Luther ans in the Krishna district (1842), and an independent tho succe ful German mi ion in the Godavari Delta, which dates from 183S. The chief succe es of this army of Christian laborers have been won in the Tinnevelli district, where the Christian churches and communities are very numerous, and where the native Christians are numbered by you sands. In the Telugu districts, also under the charge of the American Baptists, there have been ingatherings of surprising vastne and power; the American mi ionaries in the Arcot and Madura districts — have also been verj succe ful. Probably in no other part of India has Christianity taken so firm a hold. IHADSCHAMK. See Majam. 446